Following an application from Gelita AG, submitted pursuant to Article 13(5) of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 via the Competent Authority of Germany, the EFSA Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA) was asked to deliver an opinion on the scientific substantiation of a health claim related to VeriSol®P and a change in skin elasticity leading to an improvement in skin function. The Panel considers that the food, VeriSol®P, which is the subject of the health claim, is sufficiently characterised. The claimed effect proposed by the applicant is "maintenance of skin health, as indicated by an increased skin elasticity and a reduction of wrinkles volume". The target population proposed by the applicant is the general adult population. The Panel considers that a change in skin elasticity leading to an improvement in skin function is a beneficial physiological effect. The applicant presented two human studies, one animal study and one in vitro study as being pertinent to the health claim. No conclusions can be drawn from one of the two human studies as it did not assess a function of the skin. The second human study assessed a function, i.e. the water barrier function, of the skin, but did not show an effect on this function. In the absence of evidence for an effect on skin function in humans, the animal and in vitro studies cannot be used for the scientific substantiation of the claim. The Panel concludes that a cause and effect relationship has not been established between the consumption of VeriSol®P and a change in skin elasticity leading to an improvement in skin function.


of the multiple risk factor intervention trial show that hydrochlorothiazide (the diuretic used long term in the Finnish study) was stopped because of an adverse effect on mortality. In the Finnish study the overall use of antihypertensive drugs in terms of patient exposure was far greater than exposure to hypolipidaemic drugs: what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It is important that the correct lessons are learnt from the Finnish study about the prevention of coronary heart disease.5 We believe that readers have been done a disservice by Oliver's editorial.


The high-power laser beam in the final optics assembly of high-power laser facilities is often modulated by contamination particles, which may cause local high light intensity, thereby increasing the filamentary damage probability for optical components. To study the general design basis for a final optics assembly to decrease the risk of filamentary damage,different-sized contamination particles deposited on a component surface are simulated to modulate a 351-nm laser beam based on the optical transmission theory, and the corresponding simulation results are analyzed statistically in terms of the propagation characteristic and the light field intensity distribution of the modulated laser beam. The statistical results show that component thickness and distance between components can to some extent be optimized to reduce the appearance of local high light intensity, and the general design basis of component thickness and arrangement are given for different control levels of particle sizes. Moreover, the statistical results can also predict the laser beam quality approximately under the existing optics design and environmental cleanliness. The optimized design for final optics assembly based on environmental cleanliness level is useful to prolong the lifetime of optics and enhance the output power of high-power laser facilities.


New Media usage has expanded in unexpected directions. This qualitative study pulls together two new media phenomena that demonstrate widespread engineered influence through Twitter dispersion. The first aspect is the practice of sock-puppetry deception that occurs when social media identities are used without proof of identity. The relative ease in creating a single invented online identity is overshadowed by the more recent practise of harnessing thousands of created identities to accentuate the standing of a single identity. The second aspect is the use of metadata to fetch and find increased nodes of commonality. This promulgates the perception of connectivity and homogeneity in terms of information transfer. Identity masking in Twitter, and the use of homophily to manipulate authority, public sway, and social media deception are a formidable combination. This study considers the increasing use of sock-puppetry in conjunction with techniques that exploit homophily to sway the perceptions of others. The ethical and socio-political issues of identity deception and their subsequent impact are discussed. Using the publicly available Twitter accounts of six high profile political figures, the study compares retweets that retain metadata from original tweets. Using both real and fake accounts, the paper tests the hypothesis that non-genuine Sybil Twitter accounts are deployed in the followings of popular figures by using metadata in retweets to establish credibility amongst fake entities. New Media experiences augmented manipulation in multiple ways. The use of metatagging to expose greater commonality increases both the frequency and the amplitude of information diffusion when delivered through social networking and microblogging. A comparison of the associated tweets, followers, and retweets of high profile leaders indicate pervasive sock-puppetry and Sybil deception. With homophily embedded into Tweets and Retweets, sock puppetry in social media presents a challenge. Where homophily fits traditional notions of "similarity between two nodes", increasing the likelihood of likeness to occur is problematic. If homophily and false identity coalesce, then the use of twitter as a reliable social medium is contingent on discrete user identity in social media.


Purpose of Review: This article will enable the reader to diagnose and treat nervous system Lyme disease appropriately. Recent Findings: Appropriately applied serologic testing has high positive and negative predictive values in nervous system Lyme disease. Oral antibiotics can be curative in most cases. Summary: Infection with the tick‐transmitted spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi causes Lyme disease, a disorder that involves the nervous system in about 15% of patients. Common manifestations include lymphocytic meningitis, cranial neuritis (particularly cranial nerve VII), painful radiculitis, other forms of mononeuropathy multiplex, and rarely CNS parenchymal involvement. Diagnosis is supported primarily by demonstration of anti–B. burgdorferi antibodies in serum. CSF examination can be informative in problematic cases with parenchymal CNS infection or to identify meningitis. However, oral antibiotics are probably effective in patients with meningitis and other forms of involvement, with the likely exception of parenchymal CNS infection.


There are many functional, organizational and ideational similarities between the labour services in Germany, the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD) and in Norway, Arbeidstjenesten (AT). There were numerous conduits for transnational transfers of ideas and practices, especially as the RAD oversaw the creation of the Norwegian obligatory service during the occupation. Although the German conception of labour service inevitably influenced the development of the AT, the AT was not simply a copy of a German model. Norway had its own history of voluntary labour services and the labour service idea resonated with existing structures in Norwegian society and politics. This article discusses what elements of the model were adopted and rejected. Contingencies, context and continuities also played a decisive role in shaping the Norwegian service, for which the German RAD served as an example of what a labour service should look like, but also what it should not look like.


Diseased animals do not die peacefully on their deathbeds. In nature, a significant part of disease-related mortality comes from the increased risk of predation that hosts carrying virulent infections are exposed to. Moreover, since pathogens evolve quickly, the evolutionary dynamics of a pathogen can interact with the population dynamics of a predator. The resulting eco-evolutionary system may exhibit rich dynamics with multiple attractors and limit cycles. We use a novel technique to provide a constructive proof that the system can exhibit stable limit cycles under realistic assumptions about the model ingredients, and we also perform a detailed bifurcation analysis of a fully specified predator-prey-pathogen system.


The contribution of neutral polymer brush to the curvature elasticity of the grafting surface is investigated theoretically. Using self-consistent field theory, we accurately evaluate the dependence of bending modulus on parameters including chain length, Flory-Huggins parameter and grafting density and reveal the importance of solvent. The results show that the brush-induced bending modulus follows a complex dependence on grafting density and Flory-Huggins parameter, while it obeys a simple power law with chain length as N(3). The method is further applied to calculate the polymer brush's contribution to the elastic properties of PEG-grafted lipid monolayers.


Making a career decision has always been a difficult task, requiring the integration of different individual and contextual information. Eighth graders, especially, transitioning from late childhood to early adolescence, may face indecision, confusion and lack of readiness for making a career decision. Consequently, middle-school students need individual career counseling and guidance, an optimizing intervention, focused on their particular problems. The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of using Insight TestToolkit, an online instrument for students' career assessment and guidance, developed by AMN (Assess-Manage-Navigate), a leading software company that designs educational instruments. Being available on AMN Insight platform, from our practice, we consider this investigation tool to be complex, efficient and comprehensive as it provides multidimensional information about students, helping school counselors facilitate individual career counseling. The test addresses and measures several factors grouped in four categories: Capacity, Me, at school and at home, Big-Five Personality Test, School Guidance and Educational Counseling Questionnaire. One of the advantages of this test is that the scores at each category are compared to the mean of the group the student belongs to, as opposed to establishing a student's position by comparison to a fixed score. The individual results are presented in a detailed report that contains explanatory graphic representation. Furthermore in this article, we explore the ways in which each category provides core information that comprise content-related assessments that attend to variables such as cognitive abilities, interests, personality traits, motivation for learning, attitude and satisfaction level regarding school and home environment. In the end, our review emphasizes the relevance of the information obtained, as well as the correlations among different types of data.


Aim: Stressful life events modifies brain neuronal structure that impairs normal brain functions and leads to behavioral deficiencies. Agmatine is a well-recognized neurotransmitter and has been reported to be released as a response to several stressful stimuli. Chronic mild stress model induces depressive like behaviors in rats which simulates human depression.
Material and Method: 36 Albino Wistar rats were equally divided in controls and CMS exposed groups that further divided into three groups (n=6). Agmatine (100 mg/Kg/day) and mirtazapine (30 mg/Kg/day) were administered to respective animals while controls with 0.9% saline orally. Test rats were exposed to CMS after one hour of drugs administration and behaviors were observed in different paradigms post 24 hours of drugs monitoring for 28 days.
Results: Agmatine significantly increased the time spent and entries of stressed rats in light/ dark transition box test and elevated plus maze test while struggling and mobility in forced swim test was also improved in rats treated with agmatine.
Conclusion: All the data collected and results obtained clearly validated the antidepressant and anxiolytic activities of agmatine in CMS induced depression in rats. Thus, drug development based on brain agmatine levels may leads to novel approach for stress related mood disorders therapeutics.

Keywords: Chronic mild stress; Agmatine; Mirtazapine; Antidepressant; Behaviors


We explore the effects of exporting manufactures, primary commodities, and food and agricultural products, and we examine the impact of importing capital and semi-capital goods, on structural transformation in a group of 21 sub-Saharan African countries that were covered by the inaugural African Transformation Report (ACET, 2014). The empirical results suggest that the import of capital and semi-capital goods can be a good predictor of structural transformation, while concentration of exports in primary commodities, and food and agricultural products, seems to predict weak structural transformation. In addition, we obtain evidence suggesting that higher shares of capital goods in total imports seem to have a greater positive influence in resource (primary-commodity) rich economies.


Three different digital signal processing algorithms for removing the respiratory trend from photoplethysmographic blood volume pulse (BVP) signals are investigated. The goal of this processing is to avoid the distortion introduced by the low-frequency trend contaminating the BVP signals recorded for the purpose of exercise evaluation. The three approaches are compared in terms of the improvement in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) achieved and the preservation of the morphology of the BVP pulses, as both are important for the determination of indices derived from this signal.


Molecular studies of advanced‐stage neuroblastoma (NBL) have revealed a marked genetic heterogeneity. In addition to MYCN amplification and chromosome 1 short‐arm deletions/translocations detected by conventional cytogenetics, application of fluorescence in situ hybridization has disclosed a high prevalence of 17q gain, whereas allelotyping and comparative genomic hybridization techniques also have revealed loss of 11q and of other chromosomal material. Using the recently developed technique of spectral karyotyping (SKY), we sought to refine the cytogenetic information, identify hidden recurrent structural chromosomal abnormalities, and compare them to the molecular findings. Thirteen samples of metaphase spreads from 11 patients with advanced‐stage NBL were analyzed by SKY. Most of them were found to have complex karyotypes (more than three changes per metaphase) and complex unbalanced rearrangements. Recurrent aberrations leading to 17q gain, deletion of 1p, MYCN amplification, and loss of 11q appeared in 7, 4, 4, and 5 patients, respectively, in simple and complex karyotypes. Chromosome 3 changes and gain of 1q and 7q appeared in 6, 5, and 4 patients, respectively, in complex karyotypes only, reflecting later changes. A strikingly high prevalence of the unbalanced translocation der(11)t(11;17), leading to concomitant 11q loss and 17q gain in 4 patients, delineated a distinct cytogenetic group, none having 1p deletion and/or MYCN amplification. der(11)t(11;17) was associated with complex karyotypes with changes in chromosomes 3 and 7q. The 17q translocations with partners other than 11q were associated with 1p deletion and/or MYCN amplification. The distinct cytogenetic subgroups identified by SKY confirm and extend the recent molecular observations, and suggest that different genes may interact in the der(11)t(11;17) pathway of NBL development and progression. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The three-dimensional organization of the lymphatics in the rabbit appendix was demonstrated by scanning electron microscopy of lymphatic corrosion casts and intact tissues. In the glandular mucosa a polygonal network of lymphatics led into perpendicularly oriented lymphatics continuous with the lymphatics in the thymus-dependent area. In the thymus-dependent area a plexus consisting of anastomosing tubular lymphatics led into the upper ends of the perifollicular sinuses. Each follicle was surrounded by a well-developed perifollicular sinus. From the bottoms of the sinuses thin lymphatics descended into the submucosal lymphatics. The cast of submucosal lymphatics showed notches corresponding to the locations of bicuspid valves. Lymphocytes migrating through the lymphatics and high-endothelial venules were only observed in the thymus-dependent area. The results indicate that the potential capacity of the perifollicular sinuses as a reservoir and as a drainage route for fluid and lymphocytes is great, but that the lymphatics in the thymus-dependent area are sites for lymphocyte migration from the follicles into the lymphatics. The well-developed lymphatic network in the glandular layer suggests great participation in fluid flux.


To investigate the role of attribution of success among English as foreign language (EFL) learners, the present study explored the possible relationship between the scores of Iranian university students gained in their English language final exams and the factors that they used as attribution for their success and failure. Having this purpose in mind, some 85 Iranian EFL learners at university level were selected based on their general English score. The participants were required to answer a questionnaire. As findings revealed, learners at different levels and fields of study attribute their successes and failures to different factors ranging from hard-work to difficulty of the task. It has also has been revealed that one's understanding of his physical and mental abilities has undoubtedly a great impact on his final learning and also on his achievements. Moreover, it has been found that sex has no effect on the attribution of the learners.


Leopards Panthera pardus have a catholic diet and are generally thought to prey on medium-sized ungulates; however, knowledge on which species are actually preferred and avoided is lacking, along with an understanding of why such preferences arise. Twenty-nine published and four unpublished studies of leopard diet that had relative prey abundance estimates associated with them were analysed from 13 countries in 41 different spatial locations or temporal periods throughout the distribution of the leopard. A Jacobs' index value was calculated for each prey species in each study and the mean of these was then tested against a mean of 0 using t or sign tests for preference or avoidance. Leopards preferentially prey upon species within a weight range of 10–40 kg. Regression plots suggest that the most preferred mass of leopard prey is 25 kg, whereas the mean body mass of significantly preferred prey is 23 kg. Leopards prefer prey within this body mass range, which occur in small herds, in dense habitat and afford the hunter minimal risk of injury during capture. Consequently, impala, bushbuck and common duiker are significantly preferred, with chital likely to also be preferred with a larger sample size from Asian sites. Species outside the preferred weight range are generally avoided, as are species that are restricted to open vegetation or that have sufficient anti-predator strategies. The ratio of mean leopard body mass with that of their preferred prey is less than 1 and may be a reflection of their solitary hunting strategy. This model will allow us to predict the diet of leopards in areas where dietary information is lacking, also providing information to assist wildlife managers and conservation bodies on predator carrying capacity and predator– prey interactions.


The present investigation uses intergroup contact and media systems' dependency theories to illuminate the relative significance of various sources of information in shaping Caucasian-American attitudes toward African-Americans. It uses empirical data from an exploratory survey of college students to build a chain of related variables that link primary sources of information (face-to-face versus mediated) to stereotypical beliefs, perceived internal causal attributions for African-Americans' failures, and prejudicial feelings toward African-Americans. Results suggest that face-to-face sources of racial/ethnic out-group information are more effective than mediated sources in prejudice reduction. The discussion includes theoretical and practical implications of the findings.


Alcohol consumption is frequent among university students in Lebanon as elsewhere in the world. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Lebanon's public and private universities between October 2009 and September 2010 using a standardized questionnaire to assess personal beliefs about alcohol consumption, peers' behaviours and opinions and history of and current drinking practices. Of 1235 students, 199 (16.1%) had an AUDIT score>or=8. Older age, male sex, Christian religion, attending a private university, studying a non-health specialty and residing in Beirut or Mount Lebanon were associated with a higher risk of harmful drinking. Beliefs concerning alcohol consumption and peers' opinions and behaviours were factors significantly associated with harmful drinking, especially: ignoring the dangers of alcohol consumption; higher frequency of consumption with friends; and a higher proportion of friends who drank regularly. University students' alcohol drinking behaviour was mostly influenced by peers' behaviour, and a peer education programme is recommended to decrease the risk of harmful drinking.


This paper presents a preliminary experimental study investigating the potential benefits of foundation based flow acceleration structures for marine current energy converters. Foundations would provide multiple benefits, including; increased device power output, increased foundation footprint and scour hole protection. Experiments, scaled from a shallow tidal flow site, provide evidence that these structures could give power benefits of 12–25 % depending on ramp size and flow depth. An optimum ramp size was established based on the suitability of vertical velocity profiles for energy extraction.


Background
Cystatin C may add explanatory power for associations with mortality in combination with other filtration markers, possibly indicating pathways other than glomerular filtration rate (GFR). However, this has not been firmly established since interpretation of associations independent of measured GFR (mGFR) is limited by potential multicollinearity between markers of GFR. The primary aim of this study was to assess associations between cystatin C and mortality, independent of mGFR. A secondary aim was to evaluate the utility of combining cystatin C and creatinine to predict mortality risk.

Methods
Cox regression was used to assess the associations of cystatin C and creatinine with mortality in 1157 individuals referred for assessment of plasma clearance of iohexol.

Results
Since cystatin C and creatinine are inversely related to mGFR, cystatin C - 1 and creatinine - 1 were used. After adjustment for mGFR, lower cystatin C - 1 (higher cystatin C concentration) and higher creatinine - 1 (lower creatinine concentration) were independently associated with increased mortality. When nested models were compared, avoiding the potential influence of multicollinearity, the independence of the associations was supported. Among models combining the markers of GFR, adjusted for demographic factors and comorbidity, cystatin C - 1 and creatinine - 1 combined explained the largest proportion of variance in associations with mortality risk ( R 2  = 0.61). Addition of mGFR did not improve the model.

Conclusions
Our results suggest that both creatinine and cystatin C have independent associations with mortality not explained entirely by mGFR and that mGFR does not offer a more precise mortality risk assessment than these endogenous filtration markers combined.


Once upon a time there was an esoteric and specialized notion, called "size of the Durfee square", of interest to at most 100 specialists in the whole world. Then it was kissed by a prince called Jorge Hirsch, and became the famous (and to quite a few people, infamous) h-index, of interest to every scientist, and scholar, since it tells you how productive a scientist (or scholar) you are! When Rodney Canfield, Sylvie Corteel, and Carla Savage wrote their beautiful 1998 article proving, rigorously, by a very deep and intricate analysis, the asymptotic normality of the random variable "size of Durfee square" defined on integer-partitions of n (as n goes to infinity), with precise asymptotics for the mean and variance, they did not dream that one day their result should be of interest to everyone who has ever published a paper.
However Canfield et. al. had to work really hard to prove their deep result. Here we take an "empirical" shortcut, that proves the same thing much faster (modulo routine number- and symbol- crunching). More importantly, the empirical methodology should be useful in many other cases where rigorous proofs are either too hard, or not worth the trouble!


Intraoperative neurological monitoring (INM) is the evaluation of the nervous system within the operating room (OR) environment. In this paper, the INM system is tested in a clinical setting in comparison with conventional somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) monitoring. The study results demonstrate the capability of the INM system in extracting clearer and more stable SEP signals. The high SNR of SEP signals collected in various clinical environments, including the OR, makes the INM system a robust platform for continuous monitoring. While the current use of EP monitoring is limited to intermittent analysis by a highly trained clinical neurophysiologist, the authors believe in changing this paradigm by developing continuous monitoring systems, such as the INM system, capable of automated quantitative EP analysis. This noninvasive monitoring modality will allow for a wider range of use in clinical practice. Based on volunteer and clinical patient studies, the INM monitoring system demonstrates much greater reliability and accuracy via the artifact rejection and denoising strategies. It provides more strategic filtering options for different situations under which the clinical SEP response signal could be greatly contaminated and distorted. Furthermore, the INM system offers a promising approach to signal extraction in real-time monitoring during SEP research


Plants, including most crops, are intolerant to waterlogging, a stressful condition that limits the oxygen available for roots, thereby inhibiting their growth and functionality. Whether root growth inhibition represents a preventive measure to save energy or is rather a consequence of reduced metabolic rates has yet to be elucidated. In the present study, we gathered evidence for hypoxic repression of root meristem regulators that leads to root growth inhibition. We also explored the contribution of the hormone jasmonic acid (JA) to this process in Arabidopsis thaliana. Analysis of transcriptomic profiles, visualisation of fluorescent reporters and direct hormone quantification confirmed the activation of JA signalling under hypoxia in the roots. Further, root growth assessment in JA-related mutants in aerobic and anaerobic conditions indicated that JA signalling components contribute to active root inhibition under hypoxia. Finally, we show that the oxygen-sensing transcription factor (TF) RAP2.12 can directly induce Jasmonate Zinc-finger proteins (JAZs), repressors of JA signalling, to establish feedback inhibition. In summary, our study sheds new light on active root growth restriction under hypoxic conditions and on the involvement of the JA hormone in this process and its cross talk with the oxygen sensing machinery of higher plants.


MEDICAL management of children with acute laryngotracheitis has long been a problem. This disease, which is confined almost entirely to the childhood period, may begin insidiously and progress to a state of anoxia, or it may strike suddenly, transforming a previously well child into a critically ill patient who is fighting for his life, truly a pediatric emergency. Many treatment regimens have been tried in the past, employing the combined skills of pediatrician, otolaryngologist, and nurse. The basic elements of moist air and sedation have remained unchanged. With the advent of antibiotics it was hoped that the disease process would be greatly retarded. The fact is, however, that this condition, despite chemotherapy and antibiotics, still remains a challenging problem. In an attempt to attack the disease from a different angle we turned to the newer hormones. Corticotropin (ACTH) was chosen because it acts rapidly, an important consideration in severe laryngotracheitis


PURPOSE
In the West, curative (R0) resection is achieved in approximately 50% of patients with localized gastric carcinoma, and more than 60% die of cancer following an R0 resection. A multi-institutional study of preoperative chemoradiotherapy was done to assess the R0 resection rate, pathologic complete response (pathCR) rate, safety, and survival in patients with resectable gastric carcinoma.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Operable patients with localized gastric adenocarcinoma were eligible. Staging also included a laparoscopy and endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS). Patients received up to two 28-day cycles of induction chemotherapy of fluorouracil, leucovorin, and cisplatin, followed by 45 Gy of radiation plus concurrent fluorouracil. Patients were then staged and surgery was attempted.

RESULTS
Thirty-four patients were registered at three institutions. One ineligible patient was excluded. Most patients had a promixal cancer and EUST3N1 designation. Twenty-eight (85%) of 33 patients underwent surgery. The R0 resection rate was 70% and pathCR rate was 30%. A pathologic partial response (< 10% residual carcinoma in the primary) occurred in eight patients (24%). EUS T plus N and postsurgery T plus N correlation showed significant downstaging (P = <.01). The median survival time for 33 patients was 33.7 months. Patients achieving a pathCR or pathPR had a significantly longer median survival time (63.9 months) than those achieving less than pathPR (12.6 months; P =.03). There were two treatment-related deaths.

CONCLUSION
Our data suggest that the three-step strategy of preoperative induction chemotherapy followed by chemoradiotherapy resulted in substantial pathologic response that resulted in durable survival time. This strategy is worthy of a direct comparison with postoperative adjuvant chemoradiotherapy.


For searching gravitational microlensing events, millions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) have been monitored for one decade and only a dozen of events have been detected. The low number of events causes ambiguities in studying the mean mass of MACHOs and their contribution to the Milky Way halo mass due to Poisson fluctuation. The results obtained by the microlensing experiments, are in discrepancy with other observations in some cases. The outline of discrepancies are (i) the incompatibility of the distribution of events duration in the galactic models and observed data, (ii) the lack of abundant white dwarfs in the galactic halo and (iii) undetected heavy elements in the galactic halo that would be caused by the white dwarfs evolution and the supernova explosions. Here we use the ansatz of a spatially varying mass function of MACHOs and repeat the microlensing analysis. According to this model, massive MACHOs reveal themselves more frequently in the microlensing events than the brown dwarfs which have a higher abundance. This point may resolve the mentioned contradictory between the microlensing results and the other observations.


ABSTRACT Massive infection of memory CD4 T cells is a hallmark of early simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) infection, with viral infection peaking at day 10 postinfection (p.i.), when a majority of memory CD4 T cells in mucosal and peripheral tissues are infected. It is not clear if mononuclear cells from the monocyte and macrophage lineages are similarly infected during this early phase of explosive HIV and SIV infections. Here we show that, at day 10 p.i., Lin− HLA-DR+ CD11c/123− CD13+ CD14− macrophages in the jejunal mucosa were infected, albeit at lower levels than CD4 memory T cells. Interestingly, Lin− HLA-DR+ CD11c/123− CD13+ CD14− macrophages in peripheral blood, like their mucosal counterparts, were preferentially infected compared to Lin− HLA-DR+ CD11c/123− CD13+ CD14+ monocytes, suggesting that differentiated macrophages were selectively infected by SIV. CD13+ CD14− macrophages expressed low levels of CD4 compared to CD4 T cells but expressed similar levels of CCR5 as lymphocytes. Interestingly, CD13+ CD14− macrophages expressed Apobec3G at lower levels than CD13+ CD14+ monocytes, suggesting that intracellular restriction may contribute to the differential infection of mononuclear subsets. Taken together, our results suggest that CD13+ CD14− macrophages in mucosal and peripheral tissues are preferentially infected very early during the course of SIV infection.


Although Puerto Rican children with disabilities are at high risk for poor developmental outcomes, no standardized measures are validated for use with these children. In this study, we evaluated the content and construct validity of a Spanish translation of the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) for use with children living in Puerto Rico. Methods included expert content review, surveys of parents, and the evaluation of 44 children with and without disabilities, who were matched for socio-economic status, age, and gender. The results demonstrated that the translated version of the PEDI is valid; yet additional research is warranted to identify socio-cultural influences on the performance and capability of typically developing Puerto Rican children.


: Introns are noncoding DNA elements found in between coding exons of most genes in most metazoans. Introns are known to both increase expression levels and provide means for making different protein products from the same gene via alternative splicing. It is thought that evolution has selected for these functions of introns. Here we present evidence for an additional reason why so many metazoan genes have introns, and why some do not. We found that introns control stochasticity in metazoan gene expression. They do this by controlling stochastic autosomal allele bias. We determined this by measuring the expression of differently colored reporter alleles with and without introns. We find that introns control stochastic autosomal allele biases using a 5'-position dependent mechanism. Intron control of allele expression noise provides an additional mechanism to consider when pondering why so many metazoan genes have introns and why some have lost them.


ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Acute appendicitis is a common surgical emergency worldwide. Recent studies on hematological inflammatory markers concerning acute appendicitis have shown variable results. AIMS: The aim of this study was to evaluate pre-operative values of platelet indices such as mean platelet volume (MPV) and platelet distribution width (PDW), and red cell distribution width (RDW) in relation to the diagnosis of acute appendicitis and their efficacy as predictors of appendicular perforation. METHODS: A prospective observational study of 190 patients diagnosed with appendicitis and who underwent an appendectomy was undertaken and confirmed histopathologically. Preoperatively, blood samples of white blood cells (WBCs), platelet count, MPV, PDW, and RDW were analyzed using a Sysmex XN1000 analyzer machine. RESULTS: Of 190 patients, 169 had acute appendicitis, and 21 had perforated appendicitis. The mean age of patients was 28.04 ± 14.2 years. The male-to-female ratio was 1.5:1. The WBC (p<0.05), MPV (p<0.05), and PDW (p<0.05) were found to have higher statistically significant values in acute appendicitis and perforated appendicitis compared to the RDW (p>0.05). However, perforated appendicitis had a higher RDW value compared to acute appendicitis, which can be a predictive factor. CONCLUSIONS: The elevated value of MPV and PDW associated with leukocytosis can be used as supportive evidence for the clinical and radiological diagnosis of acute appendicitis and appendicular perforation. Thus, these values can be used as diagnostic cost-effective inflammatory biomarkers.


This paper aims to contribute an understanding of the historical experience and current situation of Cambodian rural society by throwing light on changes and reconstruction of Buddhist practice in two temples in the central region of Cambodia. It is well known that the country suffered extraordinary societal upheaval during the rule of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–79). However, intensive field research of these changes has been scarce until now. Theravada Buddhism, which was declared the state religion since Cambodia's independence from French colonial rule, was one cultural aspect most harshly suppressed by the regime. All Buddhist monks were forced to return to secular life in 1976 and Buddhist activities came to complete cessation during this era. However, since the collapse of the Democratic Kampuchea regime in 1979, Buddhist practice started again spontaneously. This paper, based on long-term rural fieldwork, describes the specific situation of the demise and rebirth of Buddhist practice in the local community. At the same time, this paper also focuses its attention on the history and actual conditions of division within village Buddhism. In fact, two differing styles of Buddhist practice, which are indicated by local people through the words samay (new/modern) and boran (old/ancient), have been observed in the research area. The so-called samay practice, which has its origin in the reformist monks' movement that began in the center of national Sangha in the 1910s, was introduced to one of two temples studied in the 1940s. On the other hand, the other temple studied upheld traditional practices called boran until the 1960s, but accepted a part of samay practice in its reconstruction process in the 1990s for the first time. In other words, the confrontation between Buddhist samay and boran emerges in a more complex manner at present than in prewar times. This paper analyses local people's varied attitudes toward the division of Buddhist practice, with careful consideration of the relationship between temples and their communities in light of the recent socio-economic changes of the local people's lives.


Emissions pathways after COVID-19 will be shaped by how governments' economic responses translate into infrastructure expansion, energy use, investment planning and societal changes. As a response to the COVID-19 crisis, most governments worldwide launched recovery packages aiming to boost their economies, support employment and enhance their competitiveness. Climate action is pledged to be embedded in most of these packages, but with sharp differences across countries. This paper provides novel evidence on the energy system and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions implications of post-COVID-19 recovery packages by assessing the gap between pledged recovery packages and the actual investment needs of the energy transition to reach the Paris Agreement goals. Using two well-established Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) and analysing various scenarios combining recovery packages and climate policies, we conclude that currently planned recovery from COVID-19 is not enough to enhance societal responses to climate urgency and that it should be significantly upscaled and prolonged to ensure compatibility with the Paris Agreement goals.


In the present days, thin-walled structural members are getting used more and more
in the industrial domain, that's why the research of these type of elements demands a lot of
attention. One special place between these elements, is occupied by the cold-formed
trapezoidal steel sheets.
The evolution of this domain concluded in appearance of a numerous manufacturers
producing trapezoidal steel sheets, for industrial roofing and structure covering. Due to the
high competition, the efficiency and accuracy in determining the load carrying capacity of
the sheets has a key role. The methods used to achieve these results have to be conformed
with the codes and standards of the country where the sheets are going to be in service.
The following study researches the behaviour of trapezoidal steel sheets submitted
to bending. The main concept of the paper, is to compare the results of the experimental
test, performed at Escola Tecnica Superior d'Enginyeria Industrial de Barcelona with the
North-American and European design methods.
Aspects, that are examined in the paper are the failure mode and the types of
buckling modes that appear in the sheeting. There is a complex presentation of the
researches that the project is based on, the software analyses performed in different
programs: CUFSM, Ansys-Mechanical APDL; tend to reproduce the real scale experimental
test.
The FEM analysis appears to be a very good scientific tool to identify the behaviour
of trapezoidal steel sheets, given the similarities between the model results and the
experimental ones. The design methods use different approaches, but converge to affined
results.


A study was conducted to develop non-dairy creamer analogs/mimics using egg white, egg yolk, soy protein, and their combinations, and their nutrient content, shelf-life, and flavor acceptability were compared. The amounts of oleic and linoleic acid content increased as the amount of yolk increased in the formula, but the increases of polyunsaturated fatty acids were < 0.5% of total fat. The addition of egg yolk to the formula increased choline and lutein content in the products, but the amounts were < 0.4 mg/g for choline and 4 mg/g for lutein. The lutein in the products continued to decrease over the storage time, and only about 15-20% of the 0-month amounts were left after 3 months of storage. Although the TBARS values of the spray-dried non-dairy creamer analogs/mimics increased as storage time increased, the values were still low. Yellowness, darkness, and egg flavor/odor of the non-dairy creamer analogs/mimics increased as the amount of egg yolk in the formula increased. The overall acceptability of the non-dairy creamer analogs/mimics was closely related to the intensity of egg flavor/odor, but storage improved their overall acceptance because most of the off-odor volatiles disappeared during the storage. Water temperature was the most important parameter in dissolving spray-dried non-dairy creamer analogs/mimics, and 55-75 oC was the optimal water temperature conditions to dissolve them. Higher amounts of yolk and soy protein combinations in place of egg white reduced the cost of the products significantly and those products contained better and balanced nutrients than the commercial coffee creamers. However, off-flavor and solubility were two important issues in the products.


The implementation of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) projects in South Africa has grown steadily since the late 1990s. However, these partnerships do not realise their potential with a decline in PPP transactions over the past decade. The drivers of success for PPP projects have become a subject of investigation to understand the downward trend. This study evaluates the different critical success factors pertinent to client characteristics that influence PPP projects in South Africa. The study followed a qualitative research inquiry that employs a grounded theory (G.T.) approach involving semi-structured interviews with nine professionals involved in PPP projects selected using a snowball sampling technique. Interviews were conducted on video conferencing and through phone calls. Seven responses were considered relevant to the research, and two were considered irrelevant and were disregarded. An in-depth analysis of the data gathered was conducted through a selective coding process using NVivo. The analysis revealed the research's emergent themes: client experience and in-house technical capabilities; client risk attitude; client willingness to be involved and trust in the private sector, available financial markets, and political support and stability. By applying the framework established, the chances of success and decline in the use of PPP projects can be considerably improved in South Africa through greater engagement between the public and private sectors in infrastructure investment and delivery. The study's main limitation is the smallness of the sample size and the use of the snowball sampling technique in which the initial respondents are likely to refer to other respondents who share similar points of view and beliefs. To counter this limitation, the researchers ensured that the convenient sample of initial subjects comprised professionals from different backgrounds.


Periodontitis is an infection-induced inflammatory disease that affects the tooth supporting tissues, i.e., bone and connective tissues. The initiation and progression of this disease depend on dysbiotic ecological changes in the oral microbiome, thereby affecting the severity of disease through multiple immune-inflammatory responses. Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans is a facultative anaerobic Gram-negative bacterium associated with such cellular and molecular mechanisms associated with the pathogenesis of periodontitis. In the present review, we outline virulence mechanisms that help the bacterium to escape the host response. These properties include invasiveness, secretion of exotoxins, serum resistance, and release of outer membrane vesicles. Virulence properties of A. actinomycetemcomitans that can contribute to treatment resistance in the infected individuals and upon translocation to the circulation, also induce pathogenic mechanisms associated with several systemic diseases.


Objectives To present a patient with recurrent gelastic syncope and a literature review of reported cases. Case A 61 years old man presented with syncope twice weekly, increasing in frequency over the last year. His daughter witnessed several events triggered by humorous conversations or while watching his favourite sitcom 'Fawlty Towers'. He would begin to laugh, suddenly gasp for air and develop facial flushing. His eyes would roll back and he would become unresponsive for one minute before full recovery. His medical history included morbid obesity (weight 200 kg), diabetes mellitus and obstructive sleep apnoea. Investigations including holter monitor, echocardiogram, EEG and MRI brain were unremarkable. Tilt table testing could not be performed due to his weight. Cardiovagal function associated with deep breathing and valsalva was mildly impaired, with relatively preserved adrenergic function. He was diagnosed with neurocardiogenic syncope provoked by laughter (gelastic syncope). Propranolol and behavioural modification reduced event frequency to once per month. We have identified twenty-one previously reported cases of gelastic or laughter induced syncope with fourteen cases experiencing multiple events. The most common cause identified was neurocardiogenic syncope. Other causes included Takayasu arteritis, cerebellar tumour, brachiocephalic stenosis and periodic asystole. Autonomic function testing confirmed neurocardiogenic syncope in five of nine cases. Beta-blockade was effective in two cases. One case responded to combination beta-blocker and alpha-adrenergic agonist. Four cases responded to behavioural modification. Conclusions The term gelastic syncope has been used to describe a characteristic presentation rather than a specific pathophysiology. In most cases, no cardiac or neurologic pathology can be identified and the mechanism is presumed comparable to other forms of situational syncope. Treatment options include behavioural modification or beta-blockade. We present a case successfully managed with propranolol.


Heritability is a fundamental parameter in genetics. Traditional estimates based on family or twin studies can be biased due to shared environmental or non-additive genetic variance. Alternatively, those based on genotyped or imputed variants typically underestimate narrow-sense heritability contributed by rare or otherwise poorly-tagged causal variants. Identical-by-descent (IBD) segments of the genome share all variants between pairs of chromosomes except new mutations that have arisen since the last common ancestor. Therefore, relating phenotypic similarity to degree of IBD sharing among classically unrelated individuals is an appealing approach to estimating the near full additive genetic variance while avoiding biases that can occur when modeling close relatives. We applied an IBD-based approach (GREML-IBD) to estimate heritability in unrelated individuals using phenotypic simulation with thousands of whole genome sequences across a range of stratification, polygenicity levels, and the minor allele frequencies of causal variants (CVs). IBD-based heritability estimates were unbiased when using unrelated individuals, even for traits with extremely rare CVs, but stratification led to strong biases in IBD-based heritability estimates with poor precision. We used data on two traits in ~120,000 people from the UK Biobank to demonstrate that, depending on the trait and possible confounding environmental effects, GREML-IBD can be applied successfully to very large genetic datasets to infer the contribution of very rare variants lost using other methods. However, we observed apparent biases in this real data that were not predicted from our simulation, suggesting that more work may be required to understand factors that influence IBD-based estimates.


The role of NR2F1-AS1 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains unknown. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the biological mechanism of NR2F1-AS1 in PDAC. The expression of NR2F1-AS1 was measured by using microarray data and real-time PCR. The effects of NR2F1-AS1 knockdown on proliferation, cell cycle progression, invasion in vitro and tumorigenesis in vivo were investigated. The mechanism of competitive endogenous RNAs was determined from bioinformatics analyses and validated by a dual-luciferase reporter gene assay. Potential target mRNAs from TargetScan 7.2 were selected for subsequent bioinformatics analysis. Key target mRNAs were further identified by screening hub genes and coexpressed protein-coding genes (CEGs) of NR2F1-AS1. NR2F1-AS1 was highly expressed in PDAC, and the overexpression of NR2F1-AS1 was associated with overall survival and disease-free survival. The knockdown of NR2F1-AS1 impaired PDAC cell proliferation, migration, invasion and tumorigenesis. NR2F1-AS1 competitively sponged miR-146a-5p and miR-877-5p, and low expression of the two miRNAs was associated with a poor prognosis. An integrative expression and survival analysis of the hub genes and CEGs demonstrated that the NR2F1-AS1–miR-146a-5p/miR-877-5p–GALNT10/ZNF532/SLC39A1/PGK1/LCO3A1/NRP2/LPCAT2/PSMA4 and CLTC ceRNA networks were linked to the prognosis of PDAC. In conclusion, NR2F1-AS1 overexpression was significantly associated with poor prognosis. NR2F1-AS1 functions as an endogenous RNA to construct a novel ceRNA network by competitively binding to miR-146a-5p/miR-877-5p, which may contribute to PDAC pathogenesis and could represent a promising diagnostic biomarker or potential novel therapeutic target in PDAC.


A heat-transfer investigation was conducted with air in an electrically heated platinum tube with long-approach entrance, inside diameter of 0.525 inch, and effective heat-transfer length of 24 inches over ranges of Reynolds number up to 320,000, average inside-tube-wall temperature up to 3053 degrees R, and inlet-air temperature up to 1165 degrees R. Correlation of data by the conventional Nusselt relation resulted in separation of data with tube-wall temperature. Good correlation was obtained, however, by use of a modified Reynolds number.


The application of Building Information Modelling BIM has demonstrated enormous potential to deliver consistency in the construction collaboration process. BIM can define an explicit configuration for digitized information exchange; however the technology to collaborate on models has not yet delivered the industry requirements for BIM collaboration. This research project is intended to provide a fresh review of industry requirements for BIM collaboration and will analyse how these requirements can be supported using a model server as a collaboration platform. This paper presents a review of existing collaboration platforms, with a particular focus to evaluate the research and development efforts on model servers as a collaboration platform. This paper also reports on the findings of three focus group sessions with industry practitioners to identify any problems in the available collaboration systems. The focus group findings identify a number of issues in current collaboration environments which help to understand the main domains of user requirements for BIM collaboration. These requirement domains will be further analysed to identify functional and technical specifications for a model server enabled collaboration platform.


(1) Background: A congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) vaccine is a major research priority, but the essential glycoprotein target(s) remain unclear. We compared CMV gB (gpgB), gH/gL (gp75/gL), and pentameric complex (gpPC, composed of gH/gL/GP129/GP131/GP133) vaccines in a guinea pig CMV (GPCMV) congenital infection model. (2) Methods: Modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) vaccines expressing GPCMV glycoproteins were used to immunize GPCMV-seronegative, female Hartley guinea pigs (three-dose series, 3 × 107 pfu/dose). After pregnancy was established, the dams underwent an early third-trimester challenge with salivary gland (SG)-adapted GPCMV. (3) Results: All vaccines elicited GPCMV-specific binding and neutralizing antibodies. Preconception immunization resulted in 19.5-, 4.9-, and 698-fold reductions in maternal DNAemia in MVA-gp75/gL, MVA-gpPC and MVA-gpgB groups, respectively, at day 14, post-SG challenge. Vaccination improved pups' birth weight and reduced mortality and congenital CMV transmission. In controls, cCMV infection was observed in 100% of pups (mean viral load in all visceral organs, 2.4 × 104 genomes/mg), versus 50% in the gB group (visceral viral load, 9.4 × 102 genomes/mg; p < 0.05). No significant reductions in congenital transmission were noted in the MVA-gp75/gL and MVA-gpPC groups. (4) Conclusions: MVA-vectored gB, gH/gL, and PC vaccines were immunogenic, and protected against maternal DNAemia and pup mortality. These results support the inclusion of multiple glycoprotein complexes in a cCMV vaccine.


In this paper, a concept of totally decoupling is proposed for the design of a flexure parallel micromanipulator with both input and output decoupling. Based on flexure hinges, the design procedure for an XY totally decoupled parallel stage (TDPS) is presented, which is featured with decoupled actuation and decoupled output motion as well. By employing (double) compound parallelogram flexures and a compact displacement amplifier, a class of novel XY TDPS with simple and symmetric structures are enumerated, and one example is chosen for further analysis. The kinematic and dynamic modeling of the manipulator are conducted by resorting to compliance and stiffness analysis based on the matrix method, which are validated by finite-element analysis (FEA). In view of predefined performance constraints, the dimension optimization is carried out by means of particle swarm optimization, and a prototype of the optimized stage is fabricated for performance tests. Both FEA and experimental studies well validate the decoupling property of the XY stage that is expected to be adopted into micro-/nanoscale manipulations.


To increase the solubility of p-boronophenylalanine (p-bpa) in neutral pH solution, the complex formation of p-bpa with some monosaccharides has been studied by 11B-NMR and UV spectroscopy. The complex formation constants (log K) obtained by the UV method in pH 7.4 solution are 2.43 (fructose), 2.19 (mannitol), 1.28 (galactose), 1.10 (mannose), and 0.85 (glucose), respectively. One hundred milligrams of p-bpa is able to dissolve in 3 ml of 0.3 M fructose solution at pH 7.98. Based on the results obtained, the behavior of p-bpa-monosaccharide complexes in vivo after injection of the complex solution is described.


We obtain the fault diameter of k-ary n-cube interconnection networks (also known as n-dimensional k-torus networks). We start by constructing a complete set of node-disjoint paths (i.e., as many paths as the degree) between any two nodes of a k-ary n-cube. Each of the obtained paths is of length zero, two, or four plus the minimum length except for one path in a special case (when the Hamming distance between the two nodes is one) where the increase over the minimum length may attain eight. These results improve those obtained by B. Bose et al. (1995) where the length of some of the paths has a variable increase (which can be arbitrarily large) over the minimum length. These results are then used to derive the fault diameter of the k-ary n-cube, which is shown to be /spl Delta/+1 where /spl Delta/ is the fault free diameter.


Recently, clothing comfort and ease of use have become an indispensable expectation especially in sports and functional clothing which have led researchers to focus on development of smart textiles including new functionalities such as active thermoregulation. Therefore, a novel nanocomposite finishing treatment consisting of temperature responsive shape memory polyurethane (SMPU) and cellulose nanowhiskers (CNWs) was developed and applied to polyester fabric to produce smart fabric having dual responsive performance to moisture besides temperature. Water vapour, air permeability and sweat absorption properties were investigated under different temperature and relative humidity conditions to test thermoregulation performance of the treated fabrics. Physical, mechanical properties (weight, thickness and bursting strength) and durability of treated fabrics were also tested. Morphology, chemical compositions and thermal characterization of treated fabrics were investigated by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) and Thermogravimetric (TG) analyses, respectively. It was found out that polyester fabric exhibited dynamic breathability and sweat absorption with temperature and relative humidity of body or environmental conditions thanks to the obtained dual responsive shape memory function. Also, mechanical and end use performances such as bursting strength and washing fastness of polyester were enhanced with this treatment. Summing up, SMPU-CNW nanocomposite treatment can be a good alternative for smart sports clothing having thermoregulation function for enhanced comfort besides desired mechanical and end use performances.


The cell adhesion molecule integrin alphavbeta3 is an important player in the process of tumor angiogenesis and metastasis. Antibodies, peptides, peptidomimetics, and small molecule antagonists against integrin alphavbeta3 have been shown to induce endothelial apoptosis, to inhibit tumor angiogenesis, and to increase endothelial permeability. The ability to quantitatively image integrin alphavbeta3 expression in vivo in a noninvasive manner may shed new light into the mechanism of angiogenesis and antiangiogenic treatment efficacy based on integrin antagonism. Tumor integrin expression imaging will also aid in lesion detection, patient stratification, new anti-integrin drug development/validation, as well as treatment monitoring and optimization. This review summarizes the recent advances in multimodality imaging of tumor integrin alphavbeta3 expression using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), ultrasound, near-infrared (NIR) fluorescence, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and positron emission tomography (PET).


Abstract. Gross primary productivity (GPP) quantifies the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) fixed by plants through photosynthesis. Although as a key quantity of terrestrial ecosystems, there is a lack of high-spatial-and-temporal-resolution, real-time, and observation-based GPP products. To address this critical gap, here we leverage a state-of-the-art vegetation index, near‐infrared reflectance of vegetation (NIRV), along with accurate photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), to produce a SatelLite Only Photosynthesis Estimation (SLOPE) GPP product in the Contiguous United States (CONUS). Compared to existing GPP products, the proposed SLOPE product is advanced in its spatial resolution (250 m versus > 500 m), temporal resolution (daily versus 8-day), instantaneity (1 day latency versus > 2 weeks latency), and quantitative uncertainty (on a per-pixel and daily basis versus no uncertainty information available). These characteristics are achieved because of several technical innovations employed in this study: (1) SLOPE couples machine learning models with MODIS atmospheric and land products to accurately estimate PAR. (2) SLOPE couples highly efficient and pragmatic gap-filling and filtering algorithms with surface reflectance acquired by both Terra and Aqua MODIS satellites to derive a soil-adjusted NIRV (SANIRV) dataset. (3) SLOPE couples a temporal pattern recognition approach with a long-term Crop Data Layer (CDL) product to predict dynamic C4 crop fraction. Through developing a parsimonious model with only two slope parameters, the proposed SLOPE product explains 84 % of the spatial and temporal variations in GPP acquired from 50 AmeriFlux eddy covariance sites (332 site-years), with a root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 1.65 gC m−2 d−1. With such a satisfactory performance and its distinct characteristics in spatiotemporal resolution and instantaneity, the proposed SLOPE GPP product is promising for regional carbon cycle research and a broad range of real-time applications. The archived dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.3334/ORNLDAAC/1786 (Download page: https://daac.ornl.gov/daacdata/cms/SLOPE_GPP_CONUS/data/) (Jiang and Guan, 2020), and the real-time dataset is available upon request.


which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution , and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of naturally occurring small non-coding RNAs of about 22 nucleotides that have recently emerged as important regulators of gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. Recent studies provided clear evidence that microRNAs are abundant in the lung, liver and kidney and modulate a diverse spectrum of their functions. Moreover, a large number of studies have reported links between alterations of miRNA homeostasis and pathological conditions such as infectious diseases, sickle cell disease and endometrium diseases as well as lung, liver and kidney diseases. As a consequence of extensive participation of miRNAs in normal functions, alteration and/or abnormalities in miRNAs should have importance in human diseases. Beside their important roles in patterning and development, miRNAs also orchestrated responses to pathogen infections. Particularly, emerging evidence indicates that viruses use their own miRNAs to manipulate both cellular and viral gene expression. Furthermore, viral infection can exert a profound impact on the host cellular miRNA expression profile, and several RNA viruses have been reported to interact directly with cellular miRNAs and/or to use these miRNAs to augment their replication potential. Here I briefly summarize the newly discovered roles of miRNAs in various human diseases including infectious diseases, sickle cell disease and enod-metrium diseases as well as lung, liver and kidney diseases.


Oxford Archaeology (OA) North were commissioned by The Environment Partnership Ltd (TEP) to undertake a trial trench evaluation of the proposed development of Tameside Wellness Centre, Denton, Greater Manchester (NGR SJ 9256 9566). The evaluation fieldwork, comprising six trenches, was carried out between 29th October and 2nd November 2018. The evaluation was rapidly followed by excavation of three parts of the site, with the fieldwork being undertaken between 8th and 21st November 2018.
The evaluation trenching aimed to establish the state of preservation of archaeological remains of interest within the Proposed Development Area (PDA) and, therefore, informed both the need for, and scope of, the subsequent excavation. The evaluation confirmed the presence of structural
remains relating to the former hat factory and terrace housing, with floor surfaces and walls being identified in Trenches 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. There was no archaeology identified in Trench 6, suggesting that the structures identified on the historic mapping had been truncated.
As significant structural remains were identified during the evaluation, a mitigation strategy was put in place which involved the exposure and recording of the remains of the hat factory and two of the terrace houses, to mitigate their loss or damage during subsequent development of the PDA. The
excavation revealed that the structures on the site were fairly well preserved throughout the PDA. These structures also correlated well with the historic mapping and documentary evidence.


Abstract
Purpose
The roles of 'conventional' (fixed-route and fixed-timetable) bus services is examined and compared to demand-responsive services, taking rural areas in England as the basis for comparison. It adopts a 'rural' definition of settlements under a population of 10,000.

Design/methodology/approach
Evidence from the National Travel Survey, technical press reports and academic work is brought together to examine the overall picture.

Findings
Inter-urban services between towns can provide a cost-effective way of serving rural areas where smaller settlements are suitably located. The cost structures of both fixed-route and demand-responsive services indicate that staff time and cost associated with vehicle provision are the main elements. Demand-responsive services may enable larger areas to be covered, to meet planning objectives of ensuring a minimum of level of service, but experience often shows high unit cost and public expenditure per passenger trip. Economic evaluation indicates user benefits per passenger trip of similar magnitude to existing average public expenditure per trip on fixed-route services. Considerable scope exists for improvements to conventional services through better marketing and service reliability.

Practical implications
The main issue in England is the level of funding for rural services in general, and the importance attached to serving those without access to cars in such areas.

Social implications
The boundary between fixed-route and demand-responsive operation may lie at relatively low population densities.

Originality/value
The chapter uses statistical data, academic research and operator experience of enhanced conventional bus services to provide a synthesis of outcomes in rural areas.


Abstract A Memorandum of Understanding, which formed the Robust Redhorse Conservation Committee (RRCC), was developed and adopted by concerned stakeholders in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina to attempt recovery of the recently "rediscovered," and rare, robust redhorse Moxostoma robustum. As part of the conservation program, genetic analyses of robust redhorse populations were needed to facilitate responsible hatchery programs that could be used to supplement natural reproduction in declining populations and to reestablish populations in rivers in which it may have historically been present. We analyzed mtDNA control region sequences in robust redhorse from the Oconee and Ocmulgee Rivers in the Altamaha River drainage and the Savannah River to determine the genetic relatedness of these populations to guide restoration efforts. Fixed differences in mtDNA haplotypes were found between robust redhorse from the two drainages that strongly argues for the designation of these populations as Evolutionarily Significant Units and against the interstock transfer of fish. Further studies will be needed to evaluate the full significance of these differences and associated management implications.


The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is a highly transmittable and pathogenic viral infection caused by a novel evolutionarily divergent RNA virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus first emerged in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and subsequently spreaded around the world. Genomic analyses revealed that this zoonotic virus may be evolved naturally but not a purposefully manipulated laboratory construct. However, currently available data are not sufficient to precisely conclude the origin of this fearsome virus. Comprehensive annotations of the whole-genomes revealed hundreds of nucleotides, and amino acids mutations, substitutions and/or deletions at different positions of the ever changing SARS-CoV-2 genome. The spike (S) glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 possesses a functional polybasic (furin) cleavage site at the S1-S2 boundary through the insertion of 12 nucleotides. It leads to the predicted acquisition of 3-O-linked glycan around the cleavage site. Although real-time RT-PCR methods targeting specific gene(s) have widely been used to diagnose the COVID-19 patients, however, recently developed more convenient, cheap, rapid, and specific diagnostic tools targeting antigens or CRISPR-Cas-mediated method or a newly developed plug and play method should be available for the resource-poor developing countries. A large number of candidate drugs, vaccines and therapies have shown great promise in early trials, however, these candidates of preventive or therapeutic agents have to pass a long path of trials before being released for the practical application against COVID-19. This review updates current knowledge on origin, genomic evolution, development of the diagnostic tools, and the preventive or therapeutic remedies of the COVID-19. We also discussed the future scopes for research, effective management, and surveillance of the newly emerged COVID-19 disease.


Ogilvie's syndrome is a rare and potentially fatal disease that can easily be mistaken for postoperative ileus. Also known as acute colonic pseudo-obstruction, early recognition and diagnosis of the syndrome allows for treatment prior to bowel perforation and requisite abdominal surgery. The authors report a case of Ogilvie's syndrome following spinal deformity correction and tethered cord release in an adolescent who presented with acute abdominal distension, nausea, and vomiting on postoperative Day 0. The patient was initially diagnosed with adynamic ileus and treated conservatively with bowel rest, reduction in narcotic dosage, and a regimen of stool softeners, laxatives, and enemas. Despite this treatment, her clinical course failed to improve, and she demonstrated significant colonic distension radiographically. Intravenous neostigmine was administered as a bolus with a rapid and dramatic response. This case is the first reported instance of neostigmine use for Ogilvie's syndrome treatment following a pediatric neurosurgical operation.


OBJECTIVE
This study examined the socioeconomic differentials for the health and health related behaviors among South Korean middle school students.

METHODS
A nationwide cross-sectional interview survey of 3,449 middle school second-grade students and their parents was conducted using a stratified multi-stage cluster sampling method. The response rate was 93.3%. The socioeconomic position indicators were based on self-reported information from the students and their parents: parental education, father's occupational class, monthly family income, out-of-pocket expenditure for education, housing ownership, educational expectations, educational performance and the perceived economic hardships. The outcome variables that were measured were also based on the self-reported information from the students. The health measures included self-rated health conditions, psychological or mental problems, the feelings of loneliness at school, the overall satisfaction of life and the perceived level of stress. The health related behaviors included were smoking, alcohol drinking, sexual intercourse, violence, bullying and verbal and physical abuse by parents.

RESULTS
Socioeconomic differences for the health and health related behaviors were found among the eighth grade boys and girls of South Korea. However, the pattern varied with gender, the socioeconomic position indicators and the outcome measures. The prevalence rates of the overall dissatisfaction with life for both genders differed according to most of the eight socioeconomic position indicators. All the health measures were significantly different according to the perceived economic hardship. However, the socioeconomic differences in the self-rated health conditions and the psychosocial or mental problems were not clear. The students having higher socioeconomic position tended to be a perpetrator of bullying while those students with lower socioeconomic position were more likely to be a victim.

CONCLUSIONS
The perceived economic hardships predicted the health status among the eighth graders of South Korea. The overall satisfaction of life was associated with the socioeconomic position indicators. Further research efforts are needed to explore the mechanisms on how and why the socioeconomic position affects the health and health related behaviors in this age group.


: The main objective of the study was to identify the factors, especially related to logistics, that contribute the most to product returns from retail pharmacy market back to distributers and manufacturers. From literature search the mostly emphasized three logistical factors namely Customer Service (CS), Inventory and Storage (IS) and Transportation were picked to study their impact on Returns (RE). This study was conducted for the retail pharmacy market of Pakistan. Data was collected through a close ended questionnaire by a small team of enumerators. A total of 161 valid responses from a sample of 370 pharmacies, picked randomly, were received and analyzed through SPSS. The analysis indicated that CS and IS are significant contributors for the return of medicines (RE) from pharmacies to wholesalers or distributors. Role of TR was not very significant in the sample picked for this research.


Stimulation of the cardiac sympathetic efferent nerves is accompanied by a release of catechol amines in coronary blood. This release is a function of stimulation intensity and occurs even when stroke volume and coronary outflow are maintained constant. Comparison between the ethylenediamine and the trihydroxyindole methods for the analysis of plasma catechol amines shows both quantitative and qualitative differences, with only the results with the latter method showing a consistent relationship to the hemodynamic changes observed during cardiac sympathetic stimulation. The acutely synipatheetomized heart extracts catechol amines from coronary blood in the absence of nervous stimulation. The patterns of extraction observed indicate that the quantity of catechol amines in the myocardium can modify the extent of extraction in the unstimulated state as well as the extent of release during stimulation. Continued stimulation of the cardiac sympathetics is accompanied by at least a partial depletion of the myoeardial catechol amine stores. These stores appear to be repleted by circulating catechol amines, since the response to any given intensity of stimulation can be potentiated by a prior norepinephrine infusion. Dichloroisoproterenol prevents neither the myocardial extraction of catechol amines in the unstimulated state nor the release of catechol amines during sympathetic stimulation; it does lessen or abolish the cardiody-namic effects of sympathetic stimulation. Data are presented which indicate that a direct coronary vasoconstriction is one of the consequences of cardiac sympathetic nerve stimulation, the vasodilatation usually observed being due, at least in part, to overriding metabolic factors.


Fine-needle cholangiography (FNC) in the jaundiced patient is well established, but its role in the diagnostic work-up of nonjaundiced patients has not been emphasized. We present 44 consecutive nonjaundiced patients with a serum bilirubin level of 2.4 mg% of less who underwent FNC. The indications were recurrent RUQ pain (77%), painless cholestasis (16%), and relapsing pancreatitis (7%). In all but two patients, one or more inconclusive techniques [oral cholecystography, ultrasonography, intravenous cholangiography, or endoscopic retrograde cholangiography (ERC)] had been employed prior to FNC. Biliary tract opacification was successful in 35 of 44 (80%). In nine of 35 (26%) choledocholithiasis and/or cholelithiasis was present. In four (11%) a significant extrahepatic biliary stricture was noted. More than five needle insertions were often required for successful entry. No complications occurred. Indications for FNC should be extended to include nonjaundiced patients with RUQ pain or painless cholestasis in whom oral cholecystography, ultrasonography, and intravenous cholangiography have been of no diagnostic help. The relative ease and low cost of FNC make it preferable to ERC in these patients.


1. This paper was commissioned by the Trade and Markets Division of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to address the relationship between food aid and commercial international food trade as background to an anticipated OECD study on the export competition aspects of food aid. The terms of reference for this study call for "a critical review of the existing literature on the potential use of food aid as an export support policy or, alternatively, the potential that food aid bears implications similar to those of export supporting policies." 2. This paper can be summarized as follows. Food aid has multiple objectives, modalities and effects and there has been significant movement over time in each of these areas. Concerns about the use of food aid as an export support policy are founded in both the history of bilateral food aid, in the political economy of food aid support in major donor countries, and in some current uses. The effects of food aid on commercial international food trade turn on several key factors, chief among which is its targeting, of which timing of deliveries is an important subfactor. Due to inevitably imperfect targeting at both macro and micro levels, food aid clearly displaces commercial sales of food contemporaneously in recipient economies. The evidence is unclear as to the distribution of these short-term losses across domestic and foreign suppliers in recipient countries, but the evidence somewhat favors the conclusion that most of the displacement comes out of commercial imports. Whether this displacement adversely effects international food markets depends on the manner in which the food aid is obtained, how well integrated the recipient economy market is with the global market, and recipient demand for variety. The longer-term effects of food aid turn on the dynamic income effects of food aid receipt and the extent to which these stimulate future food demand. The crucial questions then are how the short-term losses due to contemporaneous displacement of commercial imports, the global market effects of alternative food aid procurement modalities, and the long-term gains from any derivative income stimulus balance out over time and how these costs and benefits are distributed among donors and third party exporters. Research on these topics has been surprisingly scarce and, largely as a consequence, premature conclusions are too often drawn on the basis of quite limited evidence on the contemporaneous displacement effects of food aid on recipient country markets. Finally, because food aid's effects on trade stem directly from the efficacy of targeting, policymakers exploring the effects of food aid on commercial international food trade must consider explicitly the trade-off between higher expected displacement of commercial trade and higher expected targeting errors of exclusion of intended beneficiaries through restrictive distribution rules.


Background The baculoviral IAP repeat containing 5 (BIRC5) related to epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, it remains unclear whether BIRC5-related genes can be used as prognostic markers of HCC. Methods Kaplan-Meier (K-M) survival curve was used to assess the Overall Survival (OS) of high- and low-expression group divided by the median of BIRC5 expression. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the two groups were screened using the limma package, and performed the functional enrichment analysis by the clusterProfiler package. WGCNA was used to analyze the relationship of the module and the clinical traits. The risk signature was constructed by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses and the enrichment analysis of genes in the risk signature was performed by the Intelligent pathway analysis (IPA). The immunophenoscore (IPS) and the tumor immune dysfunction and exclusion (TIDE) were used to estimate the clinical significance of the risk groups. Results BIRC5 was high-expressed in HCC samples and associated with a poor prognosis ( p -value < 0.0001). WGCNA screened 180 module genes which were overlapped with the 241 DEGs, ultimately getting 33 candidate genes. After the Cox regression analyses, CENPA, CDCA8, EZH2, KIF20A, KPNA2, CCNB1, KIF18B and MCM4 were preserved and used to construct risk signature, followed by calculating the risk score. The patients in high-risk groups stratified by median of the risk score were associated with a poor prognosis. The risk score had high accuracy [the area under the curve (AUC) > 0.72] and was closely associated with clinicopathological characteristics of HCC patients. IPA suggested that the 8 genes were enriched in Cancer and Immunological disease related pathways. IPS and TIDE score indicated that the genes in low-risk group could cause an immune response, and patients in the low-risk group may be more sensitive to the immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy. Conclusion The risk score constructed by the 8 genes could not only predict the clinical outcome but also distinguish the cohort of ICB therapy in HCC, which exerted a vital value in treatment and prognosis of HCC.


Interpretable and explainable machine learning has seen a recent surge of interest. We focus on safety as a key motivation behind the surge and make the relationship between interpretability and safety more quantitative. Toward assessing safety, we introduce the concept of maximum deviation via an optimization problem to find the largest deviation of a supervised learning model from a reference model regarded as safe. We then show how interpretability facilitates this safety assessment. For models including decision trees, generalized linear and additive models, the maximum deviation can be computed exactly and efficiently. For tree ensembles, which are not regarded as interpretable, discrete optimization techniques can still provide informative bounds. For a broader class of piecewise Lipschitz functions, we leverage the multi-armed bandit literature to show that interpretability produces tighter (regret) bounds on the maximum deviation. We present case studies, including one on mortgage approval, to illustrate our methods and the insights about models that may be obtained from deviation maximization.


In this paper we present quaternary and ternary routing tracks for FPGAs, and their implementation in 28nm FDSOI technology. We discuss the transistor level design of multi-valued repeaters, multiplexers and translators, and specific features of FDSOI technology which make it possible. Next we compare the multi-valued routing architectures with equivalent single driver two-valued routing architectures. We show that for long tracks, it is possible to achieve upto 3x reduction in dynamic switching energy, upto 2x reduction in routing wire area and 10% reduction in area dedicated to routing resources. The multi-valued tracks are slightly more susceptible to process variation. We present a layout method for multivalued standard cells and determine the layout overhead.We conclude with various usage scenarios of these tracks.


Much research has explored cognitive functions and the nature of information processing since the cognitive revolution began with the advent of computers. With the establishing of music psychology attention was directed also to the cognition and processing of music. However, the initial reluctance of Science to avoid the study of emotions became a problem especially in studying music as a cultural phenomenon, with the inherent ability to trigger strong affective responses. For future research into music behavior to arrive at a more complete understanding of musical giftedness and what separates general music information processing from gifted music information processing, a heuristic model of gifted musical thinking, including affective behavior, bringing domain constituents together, is much needed. This is therefore the objective of this article, namely to review relevant research and in so doing propose a differentiated model of gifted musical thinking by outlining cognitive function and bringing the most probable constituents of such musical thinking together, drawing from Persson's (2009) multidimensional model of musical giftedness, which adds the significance of affective responses and emotive skills to the construct of musical giftedness.


Due to their high absorption efficiency, great carrier diffusion length, and low surface recombination velocity, lead halide perovskite micro- and nano-lasers have been extensively studied for their potential applications in optoelectronic devices and photonics integration. But it is still a challenge to achieve a stable and controllable lasing action, especially for single-mode lasing. Herein, solution-processed single-crystal CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite microsheets and microwires were synthesized to realize Fabry–Perot lasing at room temperature. Based on their high crystalline quality and high optical confinement, the lasing actions were investigated systematically. The lasing mode regulation was carried out from multiple modes to the single mode via reducing the width of CH3NH3PbBr3 microstructures.


Automatic plagiarism detection tools have evolved considerably in recent years. Owing in part to the recent technological developments, which provided more powerful processing capacities, as well as to the research interest that plagiarism detection attracted among computational linguists, results are nowadays more accurate and reliable. However, most of the plagiarism detection systems freely and commercially available are still based on similarity measures, whose algorithms search for similar or, at most, identical strings of text, within a more or less short search distance. Although these methods tend to perform well in detecting literal, verbatim plagiarism, their performance drops when other strategies are used, such as word substitution or reordering. This paper presents the results of a forensic linguistic analysis of real plagiarism cases among higher education students. Comparing the suspect plagiarised strings against the most likely originals from a legal perspective, it is demonstrated that strategies other than literal borrowing are increasingly used to plagiarise. A forensic linguistic explanation of the strategies used and why they represent instances of plagiarism is then offered, and examples are provided to illustrate why existing software fails to detect them. The paper concludes by arguing that commonly used detection software packages can be effective in identifying matching text, but are not necessarily good plagiarism detection systems. More indepth research and improvements in computational linguistics and natural language processing are required to increase the accuracy and reliability of the machinedetection procedure.


MEMS-based storage devices promise significant performance, reliability, and power improvements relative to disk drives. This paper compares and contrasts these two storage technologies and explores how the physical characteristics of MEMS-based storage devices change four aspects of operating system (OS) management: request scheduling, data placement, failure management, and power conservation. Straightforward adaptations of existing disk request scheduling algorithms are found to be appropriate for MEMS-based storage devices. A new bipartite data placement scheme is shown to better match these devices' novel mechanical positioning characteristics. With aggressive internal redundancy, MEMS-based storage devices can mask and tolerate failure modes that halt operation or cause data loss for disks. In addition, MEMS-based storage devices simplify power management because the devices can be stopped and started rapidly.


We develop a theoretical analysis of the displacement of inviscid fluid particles and material surfaces caused by the unsteady flow around a solid body that is moving away from a wall. The body starts at position hs from the wall, and the material surface is initially parallel to the wall and at distance hL from it. A volume of fluid Df+ is displaced away from the wall and a volume Df- towards the wall. Df+ and Df- are found to be sensitive to the ratio hL/hs. The results of our specific calculations for a sphere can be extended in general to other shapes of bodies. When the sphere moves perpendicular to the wall the fluid displacement and drift volume Df+ are calculated numerically by computing the flow around the sphere. These numerical results are compared with analytical expressions calculated by approximating the flow around the sphere as a dipole moving away from the wall. The two methods agree well because displacement is an integrated effect of the fluid flow and the largest contribution to displacement is produced when the sphere is more than two radii away from the wall, i.e. when the dipole approximation adequately describes the flow. Analytic expressions for fluid displacement are used to calculate Df+ when the sphere moves at an acute angle α away from the wall. In general the presence of the wall reduces the volume displaced forward and this effect is still significant when the sphere starts 100 radii from the wall. A sphere travelling perpendicular to the wall, α = 0, displaces forward a volume Df+(0) = 4πa3hL/33/2hS when the marked surface starts downstream, or behind the sphere, and displaces a volume Df+(0) ∼ 2πa3/3 forward when it is marked upstream or in front of the body. A sphere travelling at an acute angle away from the wall displaces a volume Df+(α) ∼ Df+(0) cos α forward when the surface starts downstream of the sphere. When the marked surface is initially upstream of the sphere, there are two separate regions displaced forward and a simple cosine dependence on α is not found. These results can all be generalized to calculate material surfaces when the sphere moves at variable speed, displacements no longer being expressed in terms of time, but in relation to the distance travelled by the sphere.


Objective This paper provides an introduction to latent growth curve (LGC) modeling, a modern method for analyzing data resulting from change processes such as cardiovascular recovery from stress. LGC models are superior to traditional approaches such as repeated measures analysis of variance and simple change scores. Methods The basic principles of LGC modeling are introduced and applied to data from 167 men and women whose systolic blood pressure was assessed before, during, and after the cold pressor and evaluated speech stressors and who had completed the Cook-Medley Hostility Inventory. Results The LGC models revealed that systolic blood pressure recovery follows a different nonlinear trajectory after speech relative to the cold pressor. The difference resulted not from the initial decline at the completion of the stressor, but from higher levels at the end of the stressor and slower rate of change in decline for the speech. Hostility predicted the trajectory for speech but not for cold pressor. This relationship did not differ as a function of gender, although men had larger systolic blood pressure responses than women to both stressors. Conclusions LGC modeling yields an understanding of the processes and predictors of change that is not attainable through traditional statistical methods. Although our application concerns cardiovascular recovery from stress, LGC modeling has many other potential applications in psychosomatic research.


This paper introduces a novel numerical carbon nanotube transistor (CNT) modelling approach which brings in a flexible and efficient cubic spline non-linear approximation of the non-equilibrium mobile charge density. The spline algorithm creates a rapid and accurate solution of the numerical relationship between the charge density and the self-consistent voltage, which leads to the speed-up of deriving the current through the channel without losing much accuracy. This modelling method also allows the flexibility of choosing different cubic spline intervals which may affect the performance of the model, but it is still capable of obtaining an acceleration of more than a 100 times while maintaining the accuracy within less than 1.5% normalised RMS error compared with previous reported theoretical modelling approach. The model has been proved working as transistors in a logic inverter implemented using VHDL-AMS and simulated in SystemVision, which shows the availability of implementing a circuit-level simulators with our proposed model. Additionally, although this model is originally based on the ideal ballistic transport characteristics, it shows good flexibility that the extension with numbers of non-ballistic features are certainly acceptable.


In socially monogamous species, male fertilization-related behaviors are expected to be tuned to the fertile cycle of their social female. How a male adjusts his fertilization-related behaviors to his social mate's fertile period is relatively well understood. However, the influence of the social mate's fertility stage on a male's extrapair siring success remains poorly studied. In this study, we tested 2 alternative hypotheses about how a male's extrapair siring success may vary in relation to his social mate's fertile cycle. The "trade-off avoidance" hypothesis posits that males engage in extrapair fertilization-related behaviors when their social female is not fertile to avoid a potential trade-off between within-pair and extrapair reproduction. Alternatively, the "pair synchrony spillover" hypothesis postulates that males are more likely to sire extrapair offspring when their social mate is fertile because male investment in fertilization-related behaviors during their social mate's fertile period aimed at increasing within-pair siring success will have positive "spillover" effects on their extrapair siring success. To assess the support for each of these 2 hypotheses, we studied a population of great tits (Parus major) for 4 consecutive years in 12 nest-box plots and quantified each male's extrapair siring success before, during, and after the fertile period of his social mate. After correcting for variation in the availability of fertile females, males gained more extrapair paternity during the fertile period of their social mate, supporting the "pair synchrony spillover" hypothesis.


The main objective of this review article is to discuss the therapeutic uses of Nishadi Vati and to discuss the different pharmacological properties and therapeutic uses of isolated constituent drugs of Nishadi Vati. The authentic subject material has been reviewed from Ayurveda and modern medical literature. Different research and review article were searched in different journals. The subject material has also been searched on internet. This review is mainly focused on different aspects of herbomineral Ayurvedic formulation, Nishadi Vati. In Ayurveda Nishadi Vati is mentioned in the management of Kushtha Roga (skin disease). It is well recognized in Ayurveda that most of the skin diseases run a chronic course and are difficult to treat. Now days, it is well acknowledged and established by several experimental and clinical studies that skin diseases have a psychosocial impact. Most of the skin diseases have strong relation with psychological stress and stress is responsible for onset and exacerbation of different skin disorders. Here, an attempt has been made to address chemistry, pharmacology and different therapeutic uses of Nishadi Vati and its constituent drugs.